Faculty News 2006-2007, Vol. 2
Nina Cornyetz’s second book, The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature: Polygraphic Desire, was published by Routledge’s Contemporary Japan Series in November 2006. The book is a study of the ethics of modern Japanese aesthetics from the 1930s, through World War II, and into the post-war period. Cornyetz embarks on readings of some of the most significant literary and film texts of the Japanese canon and shows how these authors and filmmakers' concepts of beauty and relations to others were deeply impacted by political and social factors.
Stephen Duncombe’s latest book, published by The New Press in January 2007, is entitled Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. In it, he proposes that popular fantasies, such as advertising campaigns, video games, and celebrity culture can help us define and make possible a new political future. Slavoj Žižek, a prominent sociologist and cultural critic, said of Dream: “The book is simply the sine qua non for any renewal of Leftist politics!” Duncombe also recently published an article, “Politics Past Reason: Walter Lippmann and the Manufacture of Dissent,” in Radical Society, v. 32, 2006.
Kathy Engel published two books in early 2007: Ruth's Skirts (IKON, February 2007), a collection of her poems and prose pieces; and We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon (Interlink Books, March 2007), which she coedited with Kamal Boullata.
Lise Friedman's book, Letters to Juliet, coauthored with Ceil Friedman, was published in November 2006 by Stewart, Tabori and Chang and was subsequently optioned for a movie. The book is a compilation of missives that lovelorn people all over the world have written to storied star-crossed lover Juliet Capulet. Summit Entertainment has acquired the screen rights and will develop it into a contemporary romance film, to be directed by Gary Winick.
Sharon Friedman’s “Honor or Virtue Unrewarded: Susan Glaspell's Parodic Challenge to Ideologies of Sexual Conduct and the Discourse of Intimacy,” was published in the Fall 2006 edition of the New England Theatre Journal.
Lisa Goldfarb’s essay, “Erotics of Sound in Wallace Stevens,” appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the Wallace Stevens Journal (Vol. 30, No.2), in a special issue devoted to Stevens' erotic poetics (edited by Angus Cleghorn). Goldfarb also had a review of Eleanor Cook's most recent book, Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, in the same issue.
Eve Meltzer reviewed the “Phantom Captain: Art and Crowdsourcing” exhibition, shown at Apexart in New York City from October to November 2006, for Frieze Magazine (No. 104, Winter 2007).
Meera Nair’s essay, “My Inheritance,” is included in a collection of essays, Money Changes Everything: Twenty-Two Writers Tackle the Last Taboo with Tales of Sudden Windfalls, Staggering Debts, and Other Surprising Turns of Fortune (Doubleday, January 2007), edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell.
Kim Phillips-Fein published an essay, “Be Dull, Mr. President,” a review of a book on Ronald Reagan's presidency, in the London Review of Books in October 2006. In addition, an article summarizing her dissertation, entitled “Top-Down Revolution: Businessmen, Intellectuals and Politicians Against the New Deal,” appeared in the December 2006 issue of Enterprise and Society: The International Journal of Business History (Vol. 7, No. 4).
Matthew Pitt's story, “Attention, Please. Now” was published in the Autumn 2006 edition of The Southern Review (Issue 42:4). The story has since been nominated for Houghton Mifflin's Best American Sports Writing anthology.
Marina Sitrin’s book, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, was published in November 2006 by AK Press. The book is an oral history of the autonomous social movements in Argentina in recent years, and was first released in Spanish in 2003 with the title Horizontalidad: Voces de Poder Popular en Argentina.
In November 2006, Ashgate published Alycia Smith-Howard’s Studio Shakespeare: The Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, a study of the history of the Royal Shakespeare Company's studio theatre, The Other Place. Smith-Howard examines twelve productions that were performed at The Other Place from 1973 to 1989, and includes a biography of its founder and first artistic director, Mary Ann “Buzz” Goodbody, a socialist, feminist, and the Company's first female director.
Paul Thaler published a book review entitled “The Legacy of Neil Postman, and the Coming of Age of Media Ecology,” in the Journal of Communication in October 2006.
Ella Turenne recently had a piece published in Searching for America: Essays on Art and Architecture (Cambridge Scholars Press, December 2006).
Presentations and Appearances
In October 2006 Martha Bowers took part in a panel discussion at Parsons, the New School for Design on the topic of mapping as a method of documenting observations about space, place, experience, or activity in New York City. Bowers was also a featured presenter at the Symposium on Site-Specific Performance held at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the CUNY Graduate Center that same month.
William Caspary served on a panel on the subject of “Pragmatism and Democracy” for the Northeast Political Science Association in Boston, MA, in November 2006.
Michael Dinwiddie was interviewed as an on-camera expert in November 2006 by David O'Dell for a documentary series on Broadway and musical theatre in the 1920s. The series is being produced by Lucas Films and will accompany the release of the Indiana Jones television series on DVD. Dinwiddie also served as a panelist for the Foundation Center’s “The Art of Serving on Arts Boards” in October 2006.
In the fall of 2006, Stephen Duncombe had several appearances. He delivered a talk entitled “The Ethical Spectacle: The Politics of Performance in the 1960s and Today,” at the 1968: Global Resistance/Local Knowledge conference at Drew University in New Jersey, then gave a second talk, “Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy,” at the Rethinking Marxism conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and finally gave a performance entitled “Censorship? So What?” at Rants and Rhapsodies at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC.
June Foley was interviewed by journalist Lynn Sherr on radio station WOR in October 2006. Sherr has recently written a memoir, and Foley was asked to provide listeners with advice on writing their own memoirs. Foley also led a seminar for NYU employees on “Five Simple Ways to Strengthen Your Writing Skills” as part of NYU’s fall 2006 professional development programs.
Emily Fragos recently gave a reading at Fordham University at Lincoln Center from her newest poetry anthology, The Dance (Everyman's Pocket Library/Knopf).
Sharon Friedman delivered a paper on “Fidelity: Susan Glaspell's Un-Sentimental Novel” as part of a panel on Susan Glaspell and Modernism at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers in November 2006.
Justin Holt gave a paper on “Marx, Nature, and Practical Standards” at the Rethinking Marxism conference in Amherst, MA in October 2006.
Karen Hornick delivered a guest lecture on “New York and Film” at St. Michael's College in Vermont in October 2006
In October 2006, Julie Malnig was interviewed for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat for a story on high school students’ latest dress styles, “Stripper Chic: As Scanty Styles of Dress Enter the Teen Mainstream, Parents are Left Wondering Where to Set Limits, or if They Can.” Malnig commented on the relationship between dress styles and current social dance practices around the country. She then presented a paper, “Everyday Teen Idols: Televised Teen Dance Programs of the 1950s,” at the December 2006 MLA Conference in Philadelphia, for a panel entitled “Performing Adolescence in American Theatre and Dance.”
Bella Mirabella is taking part in a year-long seminar, “Vernacular Health and Healing in Early Modern Europe,” at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
Also at the December 2006 MLA Conference in Philadelphia, Alison Perry delivered a paper entitled “‘A Black Cutout Against a Captive Blue Sky’: Re-visioning the Venus Hottentot.” Perry served on the “Engendering Race” panel.
Stacy Pies chaired a panel, “Poétique,” at the 32nd Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium—Discoveries, Inventions, and Rediscoveries—held at Indiana University in October 2006.
“Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life,” a film that Bob Seidman cowrote, was aired on PBS's Independent Lens series in February 2007, as part of Black History Month.
George Shulman recently delivered a paper, “Prophecy and Race in Baldwin and Morrison,” at the Political Theory Colloquium at the CUNY Graduate Center. In November 2006, Shulman hosted a workshop for NYU faculty, sponsored by Center for Teaching Excellence, on how to run a good classroom discussion. He then gave a lecture on “American Prophecy” at the University of Oregon in February 2007.
In November 2006, Marina Sitrin presented on “Horizontalidad and Autogestion in Argentina” at the Popular Power in Latin America conference at the University of Merida in Venezuela.
Laura Slatkin gave the keynote address on “Homeric Homecomings” at the annual Comparative Literature Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center in November 2006.
Judith Sloan lectured on “Immigration and the Changing Face of America” at the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy at Dartmouth College in October 2006. That same month her sound installation of Tongues Twisting was featured in the Queens Museum of Art’s Queens International Show. Sloan then coproduced a panel on U.S. immigration, “Your Huddled Masses, United States as Refuge, Then and Now,” on which she collaborated with Human Rights First, the Neuberger Museum of Art (where her Crossing the BLVD exhibition of photos and sound pieces was also on display), and EarSay. The panel was moderated by Brian Lehrer of WNYC and took place in December 2006.
Ella Turenne spoke at NYC’s Wagner College on “Incarceration and Art” in November 2006. That same month she served as a panelist at the Annual Conference on Preemptive Education presented by Urban Word NYC and The Institute for Urban Education at New School University.
In October 2006, Hank Williams presented on “Street Griots: The Last Poets, Watts Prophets, and the Black Arts Movement” at the CUNY Works in Process Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center. In November, he delivered a paper entitled “African Rhythms and the Diaspora: Randy Weston’s Pan African Musical Vision” at The African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas Interdisciplinary Conference at New York’s Kingsborough Community College.
Performances and Exhibitions
Elliott Barowitz had several etchings on exhibit in late 2006 at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport. The exhibit, The Maine Print Project—Maine Printmakers: 1980-2005, waspart of a series of year-long print exhibitions in Maine.
Lenora Champagne directed and supervised drama studies student directors in staging week four of Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Plays/365 Days at SUNY Purchase in December 2006. She then went on to direct her own play, TRACES/fades, in January 2007 at HERE Arts Center in NYC, where Champagne is currently a resident artist. TRACES/fades is a meditation on Alzheimer's and our national inability to remember history.
Bert Katz exhibited new photographic work at the Living Room Gallery of St. Peter's Church at the CitiCorp Center in early March 2007.
Bill Rayner recently released a CD of new songs, “Music for the People.” The music combines elements of rock, jazz, and blues with a hint of Stravinsky.
Barnaby Ruhe, costumed as Henri Matisse, reprised his role as “action artist” for the 33rd Annual New York Village Halloween Parade, the nation's largest public Halloween celebration. Ruhe painted in the artist’s style for a live audience of more than two million people while parading up Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue. (He later commented that the experience was much more challenging than when he painted abstractly as Jackson Pollock in the 2004 Parade!)
KUDOS
For the second year, Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb was elected cochair of the Anthropology Section's advisory council at the New York Academy of Sciences. She enjoys the post and is involved in organizing eight talks per year in the subfields of Anthropology: Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, and Linguistic Anthropology.
In 2006, Michael Dinwiddie was named to the board of directors of the New Federal Theatre in NYC. Dinwiddie is also currently serving as the curriculum development consultant for the National Endowment for the Humanity's Faculty Development Initiative at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology. The project, in which the Municipal Arts Society is also participating, is entitled “Retentions and Transfigurations: The Technological Evolution and Social History of Five New York City Neighborhoods,” and Dinwiddie’s role is to aid in operationalizing a “Humanities Across the Curriculum” model in the context of technical education.
Kim Phillips-Fein’s dissertation, “Top-Down Revolution: Businessmen, Intellectuals and Politicians against the New Deal, 1945-1964,” has been awarded the Bancroft Dissertation Award for best Columbia University dissertation in American history in 2005. Phillips-Fein also recently helped to cofound, along with scholars from the New
School, Fashion Institute of Technology, and Drew University, the Market Cultures Group, a new organization of scholars taking alternative approaches to business and economic history. The group held their first meeting in November 2006.
National Book Award winner Ellen Gilchrist recently awarded Matthew Pitt's story, “Wanted: Rebel Song,” with the 2006 Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award. The piece was honored at a ceremony at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC.
In November 2006, Judith Sloan received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for her nonprofit arts-in-education programming through EarSay to develop and plan cross-disciplinary performing arts and writing workshops and offer college internships in collaboration with teachers and students at the Queens International High School, which serves immigrant teenagers who hail from more than 50 different countries